Timewarp Map Compares 1800s London to Today's Streets

If you're not old enough to remember how it used to be before every building on every street was a Costa Coffee, here's a thing. Photos of the London streets of old combined with today's modern 360-degree Street View images, so we can compare the buildings of yesteryear with their current incarnations.

The map's been created by travel firm Expedia, in the hope people not from London might now want to go there to be ripped off after seeing how much nicer it was in the past. The Historic London virtual exhibit contains 14 scenes, showing how the likes of Buckingham Palace, Oxford Circus and the bit of road outside Harrods has changed -- or perhaps not -- over the last 100 or 150 years or so.

It's perhaps overselling itself a bit, because seeing as there wasn't any 360-degree camera technology available back in the 1800s or 1900s, all they've really done here is stuck an old photo on top of its current location...

...but at least it's positioned such that you're able to scroll around today's version, giving a bit more of an impression as to how things are a bit different now and how much less encumbered by dresses all the ladies are. [Historic London via Standard]